The first is that the figure of the supposed deity seems to have more indications of being the conventional representation of an idol than of a deity. The lines of the head are precisely the same as those on the heads of the carved idols.[365-1]
We also find it in connection with the wood symbol (marginal [No. 6]) at the only points where the latter is found in the Cortesian Codex, and, what is significant, in wholly inappropriate places unless connected with an idol figure. These are found in the lower division of Plates 10 and 11, two on the top of thatched roofs and another on the head of the deity called the “god with the old man’s face,” the head in the latter case being apparently carved from a block of wood.
The second is to the same effect, the symbol being found over each of the figures of the lower division of Plates 26, 27, and 28 of the Cortesian Codex and the middle division of Plates XXXI* and XXXII* of the Manuscript Troano, where there appear to be processions of the different deities. It is also significant that in the latter case each deity is bearing in his hands what seems to be a block of wood from which in all probability an idol is to be carved.
Third, we find rows or lines composed entirely of this symbol, as in the so-called title page of the Manuscript Troano.
DISCUSSION AS TO PHONETIC FEATURES OF THE CHARACTERS.
It must be admitted, as heretofore intimated, that this question has not as yet been satisfactorily answered. Whether what is here presented will suffice to settle this point in the minds of students of American paleography is doubtful; nevertheless, it is believed that it will bring us one step nearer the goal for which we are so earnestly striving. Something is said on this subject in my former work,[365-2] which need not be repeated here.
As it is evident from the preceding list of characters that conventional signs and symbols, often nothing more than abbreviated pictographs, were used in many cases to designate objects and persons, the inference to be drawn, unless other evidence is adduced, is, that this method prevailed throughout. Nevertheless there is some evidence that at the date when these manuscripts were written Maya culture was in a transition state; that is to say, conventional symbols were passing into true ideographs[366-1] and possibly into phonetic characters.
The lack of any satisfactory key to assist us in deciphering them makes it exceedingly difficult to decide how far this change had progressed. We are therefore left wholly to deductions to be drawn from the facts obtained by laborious comparisons of the various relations in which the characters are found and the uses which appear to be made of them in the manuscript.
It will be admitted without question that a large number of these characters are ideographs or conventional symbols, as distinguished from pictures, as, for example, most of those denoting the days, months, and cardinal points. I say most of these, as it is yet possible to learn from some of them the objects they were intended to represent, the characteristic features not being entirely lost, as the symbol for the day Cimi, the “death’s head” or skull; that of the day Ymix, “the grain of maize;” that of the month Moan, “the head of the moo or ara,” a species of parrot, &c.
It is also possible to show from the manuscripts themselves evidences of the changes from conventional pictographs to true or mnemonic symbols.